Within

by Charlotte Steel

  Lisa followed the two policemen up the spiral staircase. They silently and carefully crept up to the second floor. “Clear,” the first policeman said on the walkie-talkie again.

  The staircase led to a floor. There was a short corridor with a brown, wooden floor and walls that had crimson wallpaper. All doors along the corridor were open, each one leading to a bedroom. There was an old woman and two young girls. They all ran to the first bedroom and stood there to watch the policemen pass by. The air smelled of floor wax.

  “Close the door,” Lisa quietly said to the old woman as she passed by the door, and the old woman obeyed.

  The corridor led to another spiral staircase. They were still halfway through the staircase, when someone on the walkie-talkie shouted, “Behind the building! Behind the building! They are running into Concrete Street.”

  The policeman before Lisa turned and they exchanged puzzled looks. The policeman, Lisa, and the policemen after Lisa turned to run back down the building. The air was filled with the sounds of their shields clanging against the fences of the staircase. But the first policeman said on the line, “We’re almost at the top already. Continue up.”

  Lisa and all the policemen turned back and began running up the staircase after the first policeman. Their shields were hitting the steps and the staircase resounded with the sounds of their steps.

  The top floor was dusty and filled with piles of many boxes. It had only one light in the middle of the ceiling, casting a shadow on the path toward the next staircase. Dust and the smell of it raised in the air as Lisa and the policemen ran to the last spiral staircase. They climbed the staircase.

  The rooftop was just a flat floor of concrete with low, concrete walls all around it. The winds at the top were strong and cold. Lisa had to grip her shield to keep it from being moved by the winds. There was a concrete bench on the far end of the roof and a rope was tied around it. The rope lead to the edge of the roof.

  Lisa and the policemen ran toward the end of the rope, their footsteps pounding against the concrete. The first policeman made a little jump of surprise when he looked over the edge of the roof, dropping his shield on the floor. He swung his right leg over the low wall as he grabbed the rope.

  The second policeman and Lisa reached him. The first policeman quickly slid down the rope, which led to a narrow alley behind the building. The policeman next to Lisa dropped his shield, and when the first policeman reached the ground below, he grabbed the rope and did the same. Lisa dropped her own shield and was about to do the same, but paused when she saw the most puzzling sight.

  Concrete Street was a narrow alley that was lighted by yellowish streetlights. It passed through a block of apartments. The Beast and Orlando were running along the inner part of the alley. The Beast wasn’t even forcing Orlando. They both sprinted in the night like their lives depended on it, quickly moving deeper and deeper into the alley and past all the apartments. Orlando was holding a laptop, which was closed. The few residents who happened to be outside ran to the sides of the alley in fear at the sight of the two.

  Lisa’s jaw dropped in disbelief as she watched them. She gripped the edge of the wall and said to herself, “Orlando, my friend ... What are you doing?”

  All the policemen slid down the rope from beside Lisa one-by-one, running after the Beast and Orlando as soon as they hit the ground. The other policemen from Marble Street joined the chase, sounds of their footsteps and breaths filling the silent street. Some of the areas of the alley showed the blue and red color of the blinkers of the police cars as blinkers flashed on them. The sirens of the police cars blared through the evening as the police cars moved down Marble Street, looking for the next street where they can find the Beast.

  10:02pm

  “The Beast is being assisted by FBI Special Agent Orlando Marcus. Is Marcus another one of the corrupt members of the bureau? If he is, why is he assisting the Beast? Is this incident, which started out as just a story of a jealous man who killed his cheating girlfriend and quickly turned into a wild chase of a madman on the loose in a peaceful town, actually bigger than it appears?” Charlene’s speculations can be heard in the small TV in the background. The TV was small and resting on the shelf near the wooden counter of a simple restaurant along Marble Street.

  The restaurant was a long room that was full of rectangle tables and their benches. Each of the tables had red table cloths and the benches had red upholstery. There was a large, glass window next to each table. The door of the restaurant was in the middle of the room and it was made of glass. There were only two people in the restaurant: the waiter and Lisa.

  The waiter was at the counter, watching the TV. Lisa was at the corner most table of the restaurant. She was no longer wearing the helmet, but still wore her bulletproof vest. Her shoulders were slightly hunched, and she was leaning toward the table. Her hands were clasped together and resting on her knees. She was staring at the bench across from her. She looked extremely sad. Policemen continued to talk on the walkie-talkie, but Lisa behaved like she wasn’t interested. The air smelled of hamburger, and it made Lisa’s stomach feel hungry. But she remained sitting in the warm restaurant.

  Suddenly, her smartphone rang. She lifted herself up a bit as she pulled her night gown up to reach into her pocket and get her smartphone out. She lowered herself on the bench again. She took the smartphone and looked at it. It felt like her heart jumped to her throat when she read the name of the caller: “Orlando.”

  She stared at her smartphone for a while. She breathed deeply, and answered the call. “What has he done to you for you to help him?” She asked Orlando. But it wasn’t Orlando.

  “I’m being framed up. I did not kill Angela. I have information, important information,” the Beast’s voice spoke on the other end of the line. “You need to see this. Orlando has convinced me that you are to be trusted.”

  Lisa’s jaw dropped open as an expression of extreme puzzlement spread across her face. She slowly stood up and said, “What information?”

  “Just important information,” the Beast replied, sounding frustrated. “I’m going to tell you where to find it, and ---”

  The Beast was still speaking, but Orlando’s voice approached from the background. “Let me talk to her, please. She’ll listen to me.” Orlando got the phone and spoke, “Lisa, please, listen to him. Believe him. I saw the information myself and it’s just ... it’s just shocking! Come here and see for yourself.”

  “You are helping a fugitive of the law and I am supposed to believe you?!” Lisa started to yell at Orlando, walking away from her table. “You don’t know what you made me look like up there on the rooftop of the internet cafe. My partner and my childhood friend, betraying the Feds and helping a criminal get away. Do you know what that can do to my work his---”?

  “Stop, stop, stop,” Orlando interrupted, making great effort to sound calm. “Not now, Lisa. Please. I have a good reason for protecting him. People higher than us are not who they seem, and they are just playing with us. He is not safe in the custody of the Feds.”

  “W-what are you talking about?” Lisa asked, shaking her head a bit and looking completely confused. She stopped dead on her tracks.

  “7F Concrete Street and you will know what I’m talking about,” Orlando said. “Act normal and make sure no one’s following you.”

  The Beast took the phone from Orlando. He said in a rough voice, “Don’t call anyone, not even your own mother. No backups allowed. You must come alone. If you do not follow my rules, you will prove that I can’t trust you. Then I will keep running and I will never stop running.”

  The Beast hung up the phone. Lisa removed the smartphone from her ear, staring at it for a few seconds. She walked back to her table and dropped on her bench. Leaning forward, she stared at the floor as she thought. “People higher than us are not who they seem” kept ringing across her mind.

  She took a deep breath and switched off her walkie-talkie. She walked toward the glass door of the rest
aurant as she put her smartphone into her pocket. She stepped out into Marble Street and walked in the night beneath the streetlights.

  10:25pm

  7F was just a flat with white walls, a wooden door, and glass windows on both sides of the door. The light blue curtains of the windows were closed. Its roof was black. It didn’t even have a porch. Its frontage was right next to the street. It was near the other end of Concrete Street.

  Lisa had the hood of her jacket over her head. Lisa looked around her. There was no one in sight. The street was deserted, lighted only by the streetlights and the glow coming from the windows of the nearby apartments. There was a three-story apartment building right next to 7F. The room on the other side of 7F was extremely identical to 7F, but “7E” was written in gold letters on its door. The house across from 7F was like it, but had a gate and had its front door a little farther from the street.

  Lisa brought out her gun, holding it low as she approached 7F. She knocked on the door and stared at the glass-covered peeping hole above its “7F” gold letters. She removed her hood. The door abruptly swung open and a man’s voice said in a hushed voice, “Hurry!”

  Lisa stepped into the room. The Beast was standing behind the door. He quickly closed the door close behind Lisa, his head low. He peered through the peeping hole, looking out into the street.

  It was a single room with white tiles and a small bathroom. A small sink was outside the bathroom. A gray mattress was rolled up at the far end of the room and there was a small fridge next to it. A small rice cooker rested next to the fridge. There was a wall-mounted shelf above the sink that contained a cup, which contained a toothbrush and a toothpaste. A white face towel was hanging from a hook on the wall-mounted shelf. On the other side of the room were a pair of huge, plastic boxes that were placed on top of each other. It was extremely quiet, as if there was no one in the room. The room smelled of newly washed fabric. It felt warm inside.

  Orlando was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, a laptop on his lap. He was typing on the keyboard, and looked up to Lisa as Lisa walked toward him. The Beast lowered his head even more, sneaking to each window to peer at the street in between the curtains.

  “Are you okay?” Lisa asked as she stood before Orlando.

  The Beast left the windows and followed Lisa, saying to Orlando, “Show her, Orlando.”

  Orlando clicked something on the laptop and turned the laptop toward Lisa, raising it to her. Lisa took the laptop and looked at it. It was a PDF document.

  “It’s a terrorist attack that will take place on the upcoming Independence Day. A series of terrorist attacks, to be clear,” Orlando said in a silent voice. “It’s a list of the locations, resources to be used, and the time on which the attacks will take place. By ‘resources,’ I mean the bombs and where they will be concealed.”

  “Oh, my God,” Lisa said to herself. She held the laptop with both her hands, then removed her right hand from beneath the laptop to use the keyboard. The Beast stood next to Lisa, looking at her gun to check if its safety pin was on as she turned the gun a bit and typed with her ring finger. She pressed the “down” button, her eyes scanning lines of document in search for the name of her state.

  “I went to the internet cafe near my house to check what was in it because my computer at home shut down when I viewed it there, but the computer shop suddenly had a blackout,” the Beast explained. “So, I went back home.”

  “And that’s when you found her,” Lisa said, finally finding the terrorist attack for Ohio. There were diagrams of cars and where the bombs will be placed for the 4th of July parade in Ohio.

  “Yes,” the Beast said and turned away to glance at the windows.

  “It’s also a list of the sleeper agents who have been living all over the United States for years, preparing for this specific year,” Orlando added. “Look at the names, Lisa. Gerard, Charlie, and Angel are in it.”

  Lisa’s eyes widened, saying, “So that’s why he assigned me this particular case. He thought my past will motivate me to arrest Lieutenant without considering the facts first. My own father killed my mother over jealousy, and he got to jail for it. That’s why it was my aunt who had to raise me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry about that,” Orlando said, looking concerned. “I didn’t know ---”

  “Forget it,” Lisa interrupted. She used the touch pad of the laptop to move the cursor and click the table of contents. She clicked, “Participants.” She clicked the down arrow key again. Pages upon pages of the document moved up the screen, and Lisa’s eyes rapidly scanned each line for the names of Gerard, Charlie and Angel.

  Angel’s name came first in the alphabetical list. “FBI Special Agent Angel Meyers, formerly Sol Chapuk, was the youngest granddaughter of Major Friko Chapuk. Major Chapuk served in the Vietnam War during the ...”

  “The document is meant for all the members of the New Taliban, so they know who’s who and what’s up,” Orlando added. “Lieutenant Castro discovered it hidden beneath a gold vase that he took as memorabilia during the end of Iraq War.”

  “Did you make a copy of this, Lieutenant?” Lisa asked as she read Angela’s profile.

  “This is the original copy,” the Beast said, raising a blue stick that he was holding in his hand. It was a flash disk. “That one in your laptop is the copy.”

  “I’ve been sending the file to each of my email accounts to make even more copies,” Orlando said.

  Lisa scrolled the page and came upon “FBI Special Agent Charlie Goostrapp.” “If you found it in a vase that you found during the end of the Iraq War,” Lisa said. “How come it is only now that you checked it out?”

  “I did not know there was a flash disk concealed in the gold vase that I took. It’s concealed beneath the vase. The vase had a removable bottom, and this was in the compartment inside the bottom,” the Beast explained, using his hands to describe the structure of the vase. “All I knew at that time was that it was just a vase, a very beautiful vase. Then I stored it in my possessions. I just took out my memorabilia this morning to look over each of them this morning ... and I found out that the bottom part of the vase was removable.”

  “What made you bring out your memorabilia this morning?” Lisa asked as she read Charlie’s profile.

  “Because I was ... I was going to be married tomorrow,” the Beast said, and turned away to face the wall. His voice sounded hurt. “I just wanted to remember all of the things I’ve been through, especially the war.”

  “I’m so sorry about that, Lieutenant,” Lisa said, biting her lip as she scrolled down the list in search for Gerard’s name.

  “They killed her and made it look like it was him who did it so they can arrest him and take the flash disk away from him. They can also discredit him by making him look like some war vet who has lost his mind and made up conspiracies of his own,” Orlando said. “I knew these people were fucked up.”

  “So that’s why they cut her tongue out. They can’t resist sending some form of a message,” Lisa said.

  “These criminal groups always have a liking for sending codes in their bloody ways,” Orlando said.

  “Something occurred to me, though. Why don’t they just take the flash disk from him, or kill him? Why go through the trouble of planting a guy to create the story that she was cheating and then torturing her?” Lisa asked.

  “You know what he did with the bomb. You can’t take anything away from him.”

  “Definitely not,” the Beast agreed with Orlando.

  “And that’s why he got the name ‘the Beast’ even before looking like one. He’ll kill before anyone kills him ... but not today,” Orlando sadly said.

  “I never wanted for this to happen to us. After the war, I just wanted to live peacefully for the rest of my life, and Angela was a part of that plan. I don’t even know how they found out,” the Beast said, still facing the wall.

  “That flash disk has a tracker,” Orlando said. “They know when it is being viewed and all the
details about where it is being viewed. So, when we inserted it into this laptop to have it copied they ...”

  “Police! Drop your weapons now, raise your hands, and walk out of that room, or we will shoot,” a man yelled at the door.

  Lisa froze as she stared at the door with a frightened expression on her face. She looked at the Beast, who turned his head from the wall to look at her.

  His one good eye was wide, and an aura of helplessness seemed to spread all over him. His face was more asymmetrical than ever, and his shoulders were slumped.

  Chapter 6

  Lisa turned to Orlando. His head was bowed, and he was looking at the floor with a frightened expression on his face. He held his head with both his hands in panic, his elbows on his knees.

  The three of them were frozen into spot for a while. “I repeat! Police! Drop your weapons now ...”

  Orlando was the first one who moved. He stood up, quickly taking out his gun and walking toward the door. “Follow me, Lieutenant,” he said, peering through the hole. “Stay behind me. I’ll cover you and we’ll get out of here. Lisa, follow Lieutenant. You’ll be his cover from behind.”

  “B-but, that thing doesn’t work,” the Beast said in a hysterical voice as he turned to Orlando. “They’ll shoot all of us down and fabricate another story to the public like they did with me. There is no escape. Then they’ll destroy the evidence.”

  “But we have no other choice anyway,” Orlando said in a frustrated voice. “Just do as I say for once, please.”

  The Beast did as he was told. Lisa closed the laptop shut, holding it tightly in her left arm as she put her gun back in the right position and followed Orlando and the Beast. Lisa stared at the door, feeling like an event she disliked the most was about to happen.